1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system which generates a final product using a plurality of process apparatuses for executing processes from printing to bookbinding, a process apparatus, a job management apparatus, a control method therefor, and a program.
2. Description of the Related Art
A commercial printing business receives an order of a creation request of printed materials (e.g. a magazine, newspaper, brochure, advertisement, and gravure) from a third party (customer or client), creates printed materials desired by the client, and delivers them to the client so as to get a reward. The commercial printing business still prevalently uses a large-scale printing device such as an offset prepress & press even today.
Such commercial printing businesses proceed with operations via various processes. Such processes include, for example, document reception, design & layout, comprehensive layout (presentation by means of printer output), proofing (layout correction & color correction), proof print, artwork preparation, print, post-process, and shipping.
Meanwhile, in recent years, along with the advent of high-speed, high-quality electro-photographic printing apparatuses and inkjet printing apparatuses, a so-called print-on-demand market exists in competition with the aforementioned printing business. Print-on-demand will be abbreviated as POD hereinafter.
The POD aims at handling the print process within a short delivery period by dividing a job to be handled by a printing apparatus into those of relatively smaller lots without using any large-scale apparatus or system. Especially, this POD implements digital printing using digital data by fully utilizing a digital image forming apparatus such as a digital copying machine, digital multifunction peripheral, and the like in place of the large-scale printing press and printing scheme. A POD market as a POD-based business category has been developed. Such POD market and effectively utilizes computerized management and control.
The POD system merges (combines) a plurality of print jobs into one print job (gang job), and cuts the resultant printed material into those corresponding to the respective print jobs.
There is known a technique of sending a job end notification to a client computer (serving as a host apparatus) which has input a job when an image forming apparatus ends the print process (e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-200226).
It is well known to bind (e.g., staple, punch, saddle-stitch, or case-bind) document sheets output from a conventional image forming apparatus using a finishing apparatus.
The conventional technique related to the end notification in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-200226 sends a job end notification every time the job in process ends.
Assume that users A to C generate print jobs of a gang job. When the POD system processes a gang job by applying the conventional job end notification technique, it sends an end notification to clients operated by users A to C upon completion of all the processes of the gang job.
In other words, when processing a gang job of merged jobs, like the POD system, the user of a job submitted first as part of the gang job cannot receive any end notification of his job until all the processes of the gang job end. Also, the user of the first submitted job cannot receive any product (printed material) of the job until all the processes of the gang job end.
This is because the gang job handles a plurality of jobs as one job, and printing does not end till the completion of printing the final job in the gang job though printing of the first job in the gang job ends. Even if printing of the first job is complete, the user cannot recognize the completion of the first job before the entire gang job is complete.